output – interview
From the online publication "Fellows Published 2022-2023"
Andrea López Bernal participated in the fellowship programme in the academic year 2022-2023 with the research project "Alarm". The interview below is published in the online publication “Fellows Published” that was launched in December 2024. fellowspublished.rietveldacademie.nl/2023/andrealopezbernal.html
What was the starting point of your research project?
In the 18th century, a man built an automaton chess player machine to impress a lady. The machine was beating intellectual celebrities who traveled ready to be challenged. This “machine” called Mechanical Turk for its exotic look continued working for almost 100 years.
What they didn’t know is that sitting under the table there was a chess master hidden performing the movements of the so-called Turk. In 2005 Jeff Bezos opened an Amazon crowdsourcing platform called Mechanical Turk, employing thousands of people that were willing to perform tasks that the human found easy but the machine couldn’t solve by itself. The platform consciously feeds on the illusion that AI systems are magically smart and autonomous. This magic also claims to know how to read emotions by reading faces, and not investigate what is actually behind that emotion, as in the case of the company Affectiva, acquired by SmartEye in 2021. I can be nervous in a job interview which doesn’t mean I am always a nervous person. Right? In this research I found myself getting more and more interested in what is behind “the magic” of AI.
What has been your approach for the fellowship research project and how does it relate to the role of research in your practice?
I will have to mention March 2023, it was a 3 day workshop called “the accident” attended by students of the Dirty Art Department. On day 2 we were feeling quite tired after some food and discussions on the expectations of day 3. So I asked them to lay down to induce them into a relaxing guided meditation. The guided meditation lasted 5 min which for them felt like a good 30 min nap. I was walking around the surrendered bodies, some of them having relaxation spasms, I was modulating my voice to accompany them through fields, the sunlight and the comforting breeze until they let go of their mind into a semi conscious level. For me it was a very special moment. Some of them remember the whole trip, most of them don't. On the third day we made a fire, it was lovely.
Your body of work, particularly projects like "Blinded by Shine" and "Teeth," exhibits a profound engagement with the human body as both a physical and symbolic entity. Can you elucidate on your research process in navigating the intersection of personal and collective experiences, especially concerning bodily expressions and their resonances within social and political spheres?
The use of varied materials and references, such as work done in a vineyard during harvest, dental interventions and spirit stories, appears to be integral to your work. How do these eclectic elements inform your research, and how do you approach the amalgamation of such diverse materials in exploring the notion of choreographies and authenticity across such different spheres of human experience?
I was given “AI” as a prompt to study. I was passionate about the idea of integrating AI in my practice, even though at the beginning of the research I felt quite distant. As the research continued I understood AI not only as a tool of creation, which was my instant response, but more as a complex apparatus that camouflages purposely a wide process where the human body, emotions, the use of planetary resources, and many other processes. It became a ride of unveiling ghosts that have always been very close to me.
For the last project, I worked on “Noveltelenovela”1 I played many roles created with scripts from ChatGPT with prompts from the visitors to the installation. I played to be the transmitter of its narrations, characters and situations, in the most authentic way. I played a murderer with a banana as a gun, a loving partner missing teeth, a shy lover, a person who wakes up with the mouth on the back of its head, among many other roles. That POV is something I still think about.
In the setup of the “Noveltelenovela”, ChatGPT was fixated on making me crush, eat and squish the fresh fruits. It was so unnatural, we kept on feeding it with prompts to -quit the fruit- the algorithm was coming back to it on and on, almost as if trying to find authenticity of natural in a very unnatural way, ChatGPT knowing that in set there was a body and fruit, made sense for the elements to interact even though there was no purpose. In the vineyard, we had a task and the body was our tool, in telenovela, my body was violently confronted with non-sense emotions about the fresh apples.
1 Andrea López Bernal, Sophia Simensky and Leslie Lawrence. NOVELTELENOVELA, week 5 of 55 projects in 52 days, at W139, AMS, NL.
In the 18th century, a man built an automaton chess player machine to impress a lady. The machine was beating intellectual celebrities who traveled ready to be challenged. This “machine” called Mechanical Turk for its exotic look continued working for almost 100 years.
What they didn’t know is that sitting under the table there was a chess master hidden performing the movements of the so-called Turk. In 2005 Jeff Bezos opened an Amazon crowdsourcing platform called Mechanical Turk, employing thousands of people that were willing to perform tasks that the human found easy but the machine couldn’t solve by itself. The platform consciously feeds on the illusion that AI systems are magically smart and autonomous. This magic also claims to know how to read emotions by reading faces, and not investigate what is actually behind that emotion, as in the case of the company Affectiva, acquired by SmartEye in 2021. I can be nervous in a job interview which doesn’t mean I am always a nervous person. Right? In this research I found myself getting more and more interested in what is behind “the magic” of AI.
What has been your approach for the fellowship research project and how does it relate to the role of research in your practice?
I will have to mention March 2023, it was a 3 day workshop called “the accident” attended by students of the Dirty Art Department. On day 2 we were feeling quite tired after some food and discussions on the expectations of day 3. So I asked them to lay down to induce them into a relaxing guided meditation. The guided meditation lasted 5 min which for them felt like a good 30 min nap. I was walking around the surrendered bodies, some of them having relaxation spasms, I was modulating my voice to accompany them through fields, the sunlight and the comforting breeze until they let go of their mind into a semi conscious level. For me it was a very special moment. Some of them remember the whole trip, most of them don't. On the third day we made a fire, it was lovely.
Your body of work, particularly projects like "Blinded by Shine" and "Teeth," exhibits a profound engagement with the human body as both a physical and symbolic entity. Can you elucidate on your research process in navigating the intersection of personal and collective experiences, especially concerning bodily expressions and their resonances within social and political spheres?
The use of varied materials and references, such as work done in a vineyard during harvest, dental interventions and spirit stories, appears to be integral to your work. How do these eclectic elements inform your research, and how do you approach the amalgamation of such diverse materials in exploring the notion of choreographies and authenticity across such different spheres of human experience?
I was given “AI” as a prompt to study. I was passionate about the idea of integrating AI in my practice, even though at the beginning of the research I felt quite distant. As the research continued I understood AI not only as a tool of creation, which was my instant response, but more as a complex apparatus that camouflages purposely a wide process where the human body, emotions, the use of planetary resources, and many other processes. It became a ride of unveiling ghosts that have always been very close to me.
For the last project, I worked on “Noveltelenovela”1 I played many roles created with scripts from ChatGPT with prompts from the visitors to the installation. I played to be the transmitter of its narrations, characters and situations, in the most authentic way. I played a murderer with a banana as a gun, a loving partner missing teeth, a shy lover, a person who wakes up with the mouth on the back of its head, among many other roles. That POV is something I still think about.
In the setup of the “Noveltelenovela”, ChatGPT was fixated on making me crush, eat and squish the fresh fruits. It was so unnatural, we kept on feeding it with prompts to -quit the fruit- the algorithm was coming back to it on and on, almost as if trying to find authenticity of natural in a very unnatural way, ChatGPT knowing that in set there was a body and fruit, made sense for the elements to interact even though there was no purpose. In the vineyard, we had a task and the body was our tool, in telenovela, my body was violently confronted with non-sense emotions about the fresh apples.
1 Andrea López Bernal, Sophia Simensky and Leslie Lawrence. NOVELTELENOVELA, week 5 of 55 projects in 52 days, at W139, AMS, NL.
research group
Algorithmic Cultures
Algorithmic Cultures
project
Fellows 22/23
Fellows 22/23
